St. Theresa of Avila writes I can speak of what I have experience of. It is that in spite of any wrong they who practice prayer do, they must not abandon prayer since it is the means by which they can remedy the situation; and to remedy it without prayer would be much more difficult.
Prayer. It is like the blood that flows through one's veins. It is so necessary to the spiritual life that every religion has some form of it...and every spiritual person knows its importance. But what is prayer? A written paragraph someone else thinks up? The psalms of the Bible? The words in the services we attend? Partly yes.
But this is only a start to a prayer life. Prayer is so much more. Prayer is a lifting up of the mind and heart to God; it is your own personal lifting up of the mind and heart. It is a dialogue between you and the Divine. You initiate it, but God really carries it.
Here the psalms can teach us quite a bit. The prayer of the psalms cover a wide spectrum of emotions; thanking God for graces, begging God for help, pleading for God's mercy, even asking vengeance for one's enemies. But most of all, the psalms offer us the model of prayer...an open heart that tells God all. Not that God doesn't know. But by opening our heart to God, we actually learn more about ourselves.
Prayer is the bedrock for any spiritual life; there is no spiritual life without it. Prayer takes on many forms: Lectio Divina, meditation, repetition of formulated prayers, etc. What constitutes prayer is not the words used, but the engagement of the heart.
Worship: The Normal Employment of Moral Beings
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